


system reset

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Series: into the desert [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin Skywalker Has Issues, Gen, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Umbara Arc (Star Wars), Post-Zygerria Arc (Star Wars: Clone Wars), Rape Aftermath, Slavery, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), Unreliable Narrator Anakin Skywalker, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:26:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29633916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: Anakin's got a receipt of purchase verifying his freedom and a deactivated bomb in his neck. In the aftermath of the mission to Zygerria, he struggles to remember that.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker (mentioned)
Series: into the desert [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135958
Comments: 10
Kudos: 135





	system reset

**Author's Note:**

> This, 1) makes the implications of the Queen's interests in Anakin explicit (but nongraphic), 2) is told entirely as the aftermath, and 3) plays with the timeline a bit, so Zygerria and Umbara happen more or less simultaneously.

Two standard days after the 501st and the Wolfpack’s escape from the mines of Kadavo, Anakin watches Master Obi-Wan delete the Zygerrian bill of sale. “You’ve seen it for yourself,” he says when the bug rids the holonet of all potential records of it. “There’s no evidence.” 

Anakin nods, but lets his eyes stray back to his lap rather than up to Master Obi-Wan’s face. They sit side by side on the edge of his medbay cot under the stark light of the overhead glowplanel. Across the narrow room, a couple medical droids reexamine the healing burns on the freed slaves’ necks, the ones leftover from the shock collars. Master Obi-Wan has them too. So do the other slaves, half of whom are with the Wolfpack. The other half are here, overcrowd in this limited space. Ahsoka is with the Togruta younglings now. Last Anakin checked, she was monitoring their water intake. Kix conducts a biopsy on an elderly caphex who’s unlikely to survive the journey to the Core.

When the Council and the Chancellor dispensed the orders regarding this mission, Anakin had conditions. First, Ahsoka wasn’t coming—she might be a Togruta, but Zygerrians wouldn’t be picky about species, he argued, and anyway, it would be simpler to lie their way in with a slightly doctored receipt of purchase and activated detonator for a deactivated chip from Tatooine than to try to infiltrate without paperwork—and second, the Council and the Senate would agree to free _all_ the slaves. None of them particularly liked him having demands, but he got what he wanted in the end. He knew he would, when there’s no one better suited to the role than he is. They needed him. They wouldn’t have recalled him from an active assault otherwise.

What he hadn’t expected was for them to send Master Obi-Wan along with him as the one to make the sale. 

Now, nearly a month after arriving at the cesspit of sentient decency that is Zygerria, they’re en-route home. _Home._ Anakin swirls around the word in his head, drawing out the sounds of it. The soft herf, the long onith, hard mern, silent esk. Coruscant isn’t what comes to mind; the word swirls, and on the tails on it is a sandstorm. 

“Are you positive there was nothing for you?” he says, still speaking to his knees. His pants are baggier on him than they were before this mission, as is his shirt. It’s the same for Master Obi-Wan. Just a month in Zygerrian stripped them down to bones.

“Yes,” Master Obi-Wan says, using the tone that leaves no room for argument. “I did check again, as you asked. Kix also had another scan for chips. There are none.”

In the time since Anakin awoke yesterday evening to discover himself lying on a _Resolute_ medbay cot, he asked Master Obi-Wan about slave chips and paper trails at least three times, if not four. “Good,” he says, though what he really wants to say is, _But could you check again?_ He drags his feet across the grated metal floor and listens to the familiar sound of coarseweave socks on allacrete. “And the muscles in your arm are fixed?”

“Just about.” Master Obi-Wan adjusts himself, the ercu of his tunic rustling, meaning to reach out, but aborts the movement. “That was not the least of the damage, as it happens, but fixable with bacta.”

“And you’re—” _Okay_ , Anakin doesn’t say. Of course Master Obi-Wan isn’t okay. Master Obi-Wan just spent weeks learning how to mine in a slave processing centre, one located in the caldera of another volcano, a volcano larger than the other nightmare from the unnamed planet. Master Obi-Wan won’t be okay for a long time, even if he inevitably pretends otherwise.

When worry seeps into the part of their bond that’s never fully closed anymore, Anakin resolutely ignores it. Instead, he says, “We’ll be stuck with broth for awhile.”

“I know,” Master Obi-Wan says as, from the younglings, a soft cry floats above the medbay’s muted bustle. Ahsoka’s working herself too hard, Anakin thinks, feeling instead of seeing when she rushes to help the kid as Master Obi-Wan finishes, “I remember.” 

The Temple’s usual fare was too heavy for Anakin when he was nine, and the portion sizes more than he could handle after rarely eating more than once a day for years. For a week, all the healers allowed him was the onion broth meant for the lunchtime soup, until he could manage that. It doesn’t take long for a body to reach that state, he knows now. Whether in the House or in a processing centre, the Zygerrians’ views on feeding their _livestock_ matched with the Hutt’s—just enough to keep them up and active. 

Though a Jedi shouldn’t hate, Anakin hates the Zygerrians. He still hates the Hutts too.

Across the room, Ahsoka calms the younglings. A discontented ripple moves through the adults when the droids ask them to separate into groups based on the category of injury for more effective tests, so Kix halts his own procedure to mediate. After two days, not all the medical tests are done, nor all the completed tests’ results finalised. Even the Republic’s superior technology can’t increase the speed of either hyperspace or a medic’s work to instantaneous. It also can’t rid a medbay of its smell, that mixture of sickly and sterile that never fails to turn Anakin’s stomach.

With a quick, sideways glance in Master Obi-Wan’s direction, Anakin asks, “Are you hurt? Anywhere else.” His master—his _old_ master—is too gaunt, his cheeks caved in and his bones too prominent where his tunic gaps. There’s a lot that Anakin still doesn’t know, though he can guess the basics, like what exactly Obi-Wan had to do on Kadavo or how he freed the Togruta inside, but it’s not as though they’ve had any time to talk. 

“No,” he says as Anakin turns his focus back to his lap, to the loose black synthcloth of his sleeping pants. “Kix is really quite adamant about his patients listening to medical evidence. I suppose that’s the result of dealing with you.” 

Anakin doesn’t smile; Master Obi-Wan’s attempt is too forced, and falls flat. Rather than acknowledge it, Anakin says, “So, he made you spend the night in a bacta tank?”

“It was an overreaction.”

“Of course.” After a beat, he adds, “Did I?”

As Obi-Wan sighs, he also moves his hand. Anakin catches that movement in his periphery, an indistinct disturbance in space that he has coded into his brain, and he shouldn’t, but he—but he flinches. It’s a hard flinch. Noticeable. It leaves a tremor in his body. Master Obi-Wan’s hand hovers in line with his ribs, unmoving.

Slowly, he lowers it back to the blankets. Though he has their hands aligned, they don’t touch. Through the unguarded fissure in their bond floods a dizzying concoction that Anakin can’t process. Guilt, maybe, and guilty pity. Anger. Possibly even _understanding_.

The silence between them is endless, punctured with murmurs and mechanical beeps, the droids’ monotone instruction, and Kix and Ahsoka’s mutual effort to soothe their patients. Eventually, Master Obi-Wan answers, “No. Your wounds were of a different nature. Exhaustion from overexertion is why it took you so long to regain consciousness.”

“Kix told you that?”

“He did.”

“Because you asked?”

“Yes.”

That’s not surprising. If the situation were reversed, Anakin would have demanded answers, too. “Sheer exhaustion” was also, he assumes, an obvious enough explanation. Though his memory of what happened on Kadavo is hazy, he knows that when he first landed, he was alone but for R2 and the Queen’s corpse. Within minutes, the Togruta were halfway to dying and the standby troops couldn’t descend as long as the four canons on the guard towers remained active. He needed the troops to land and he needed the centre’s armoured doors to open. There were other slaves inside. Master Obi-Wan was inside. _Only_ Master Obi-Wan. So there were the towers and the doors and the troops and the electricity shooting through the other slaves, the ones with shock collars rather than inactive detonators in their neck, and Anakin was alone but for his astromech and his master’s corpse. 

He reacted.

When he woke, it was to the medbay’s ceiling glowpanels on their night-time filter and several younglings wailing.

Ahsoka approaches more cautiously than usual, so he has time to raise his head and search her out. “Hey, Master Obi-Wan, Skyguy,” she says, stopping just short of the cot with her hands tucked behind her back, the distance uncomfortably wide. “How’re feeling, Anakin?” 

Uncomfortable himself, both with the deliberate distance and her troubled discomfort, he shifts, angling slightly away from the two of them. “I’m fine,” he says. 

“I’m really glad you’re awake,” she says, as cautiously as her approach, as her question.

“Thanks, Snips,” he says, and shoots a quick glance to Master Obi-Wan, who’s more fluttery and anxious than he should be, like he’s ready to intervene, before looking back to Ahsoka. “Not that I’m complaining, but how’re you here? I thought you were on Coruscant.”

“Well, I was,” she says, as she rocks on her heels. Her mouth twists. “There were, uh. Complications, I guess. With Umbara. And it’s not like you could get there, since you were, you know. Not that we didn’t still win, but—”

Whatever the complications were, he has to wait to learn, because Kix materialises on their right, datapad in hand. “General, General,” he says, nodding to Anakin and Master Obi-Wan before adding, “Commander,” to Ahsoka. 

Then he hesitates. Hesitation is always bad in a medbay. It’s about Master Obi-Wan, Anakin thinks. He must have lied about his injuries. Everything that could possibly lead to Kix’s expression looking like _that_ , with his lips pressed tight and brows drawn to meet and his shoulders too stiff, races in a scrolling line through Anakin’s head: severe infection, intestinal damage, heart damage, internal bleeding, illness—

Except Kix is looking at him.

“General Skywalker,” he says, tone so gentle he could be coaxing a feral loth-cat out from an alley, “I’d like to speak to you in private.”

Anakin’s world is suddenly too bright and too close, but Master Obi-Wan says, “You must listen to him, Anakin,” so he slides from the cot and follow Kix across the medbay, out the doors, through the ship’s familiar, echoing corridors where troopers and crew nod in respect, and into the cabin left empty for a month awaiting his return. When the door slides shut and the glowpanel flickers on, Anakin’s heart rate needlessly, humiliatingly spikes. R2 isn’t even there.

Release it into the Force, he thinks in a voice that sounds more like Master Yoda’s than Master Obi-Wan’s. Anakin tries, but the world is still too bright, too close. Kix still looks at him like _that_. Like he’s gauging how much his general can take.

Again, he starts, “General Skywalker,” before lowering the datapad to hug it against his side, its screen pressed into his armour. “This isn’t to give you bad news. I just figured you wouldn’t want to have this conversation in public.”

There’s something in the way he says _public_ that worsens Anakin’s agitation. “It’s, uh,” he says, fumbling over what he needs to say. “It’s not a secret, is it?”

“Droids aren’t as quiet as I’d like, sir,” Kix answers bluntly, “and the influx into the medbay hasn’t kept anything private. And frankly, sir, the agents on the ground and the other...workers who were with you told me what they heard. It wasn’t that me or the droids asked, sir,” he adds quickly, as Anakin contemplates if there’s even a slim chance of the Force allowing him to shift the molecules in the grates so he can slip through the floor and out of this conversation. “It was happening with everyone who wasn’t conscious.”

He doesn’t answer. Kix, after it’s clear that he won’t, continues, “The tests took a couple of days. That’s why I didn’t talk to you about last night. The whole panel came back negative, sir. It was for all the usual diseases and a few of the rarer ones, but you should have a full test when we get back to Coruscant.”

Dazed, Anakin nods. He does need a full test. He can’t risk developing symptoms on the front when some diseases are deadly, and with Padmé, well. Padmé.

This isn’t something he can hide from her. If it comes to it that she never wants to see him again, then that’s fair, but if she does, then, well, she doesn’t deserve him calling off _sex_ just because he doesn’t—well. He needs a full test. Even more than his knowledge that he can’t risk serious illness because of the War, he doesn’t want to risk _her._

Kix waits, unspeaking and unmoving, until Anakin unwinds himself from his own thoughts. “Thanks,” he says lamely. “Am I free to stay here?”

“If you rest, General,” his medic answers, “and drink plenty of fluids. The drug in your blood is out of your system. Whatever it was, you’re not going through withdrawal, but it dehydrated you. You also need to eat. You’re malnourished.”

After he agrees, the other man leaves, disappearing to return to his more seriously injured patients. A moment passes where Anakin just stands there under the glowpanel’s stark white light in the centre of his cabin between the skinny cot and wall embedded with shallow drawers, absorbing the ship’s monotonous hum and the solitude. The chrono in the wall informs him that it’s halfway into the standard day’s sixteenth hour. On Coruscant, in the Federal District, the sun’s setting above the Senate Building and spacescrapers. In Mos Espa, it’s still the middle of the night. Long past his bed-time, once, on the nights when his mother had the ability to dictate what bed-time should be. It wasn’t unusual for Watto to want Little Ani in the shop past moonrise if he needed something fixed quick. Watto often needed something fixed quick. Fast turnarounds increased the cost of repairs. 

Back when Anakin was Little Ani, all his master needed him for were repairs and podracing, but that never stopped his general fear about ending up in someone else’s bed. It was bound to happen eventually, Jedi now or not. People like him can’t escape their fate forever. 

With that cheery thought, he steps into the cubicle ’fresher linked with Ahsoka’s cabin, and throws his thin towel over the mirror before undressing. He avoids looking at himself when he steps into the shower and switches on the power, focusing his eyes on the ceiling. Like most starship showers, it’s sonic, not sanistream, though he wants, more than anything, hot water. Even cold would do. Sonic was all they had on Tatooine, where water was too precious a resource to waste on anyone’s body but a Hutt’s, let alone a slave boy, and a witchy one at that. 

The ultrasonic vibrations evaporate any scum from his body, but he doesn’t feel any cleaner. There’s no dried blood flaking off him, at least. Someone must have cleaned him in the medbay. Kix, probably, or a droid. That’s good; sonics and blood make for a bad mix. Once, when Anakin was seven and crashed in his first podrace, there was so much blood left over on the floor that his mother had to sandsat it.

He powers the sonic down and frivolously uses the Force to rip the towel from the mirror. Under his skin, his finger bones are too prominent. So are his kneecaps. If he wanted, he could count his ribs. The same is true for the bones in his wrist.

To Master Obi-Wan, the Queen said, “He’s very pretty,” as her sharp yellow eyes swept Anakin over from head to foot before focusing on his face. She didn’t bother to hide that she thought this was good. After she paid her fee—paid a sum high enough that at least the Council made back the money Master Obi-Wan lost them to Jabba on Tatooine—and accepted the activated detonator for his deactivated chip, he already knew how she planned to handle feeding him. _A bit feminine for a human male_ , she also said, but not like that was a point against him.

Until Count Dooku appeared, at least he knew that no one would harm him too severely, which meant he was likely to see the mission done. Between the Queen and Jabba, Anakin was too expensive for anyone but his owner to bother with killing him when the price they would have to pay in damages was that damning.

Master Obi-Wan and the Togruta in the processing centre lacked that protection.

Anakin removes a cloak from the fold-in closet after returning to his cabin, dressed again in sleepwear, and tugs it on in an effort to stave away the ever-present starship cold. After a second’s deliberation, he shoves on another pair of socks over his first. Zygerria’s capital was also cold, but the Queen was never going to allow him a sweater. He was warm on the unnamed planet, but not since.

When he curls on his side beneath his layered blankets, his knees crack. The ship hums around him, and outside the cabin door, hard-soled boots beat down hard on metal plating. It’s all the familiar sounds of the _Resolute_ in hyperspace at any hour, but still, it unnerves him. The sounds are all the same. It’s just him who’s different—or, not _different._ This is just himself, really, he thinks. A month with the Queen of Zygerria as his owner was enough to peel away any makeshift identity he crafted over the years, so he’s back to what he always has been: _the boy_ from the desert who did what Gardulla’s entertainers expected and grew up witchy. Before he left, he believed that he was a Jedi and knew he was free, and that was enough to turn the bill of sale inconsequential. Then the Queen signed it and paid her fee, and the switch in his subconscious flipped. The switch in his spinal cord. 

He closes his eyes, and presses his face into the thin, standard issue pillow, the first pillow he’s slept on in weeks. Though Kix said the drug is out of system, it still feels like it’s in there, clogging up his brain. After the room’s sensors don’t detect movement for twenty minutes, the glowpanels power down of their own accord. In the darkness pressing over him flash nondescript images of the Queen’s yellow eyes, the painted night sky ceiling with its permaglass dome, her nails biting into his wrist, a bowl that isn’t his falling to a rough stone floor with its contents spilling out, rows upon rows of raw materials, a spirit’s nightmarch in an unnamed wetlands, wind calling a storm to life in the desert at night. Steadily, Master Obi-Wan’s experiences blend with his own, stretching Anakin thin, until somehow, he’s coming out from the other side of sleep, blinking awake without any recollection of dozing, to a firm knocking on his door. In the first moment, all he notes is the pressure on his body and the firmness to the knocking and the dark, so he panics, fighting past the pressure until he’s sitting upright on a cot, on _his_ cot in _his_ flagship with the glowpanels powering on automatically and blankets on the floor, not a person, and the door opening without his directive, because he hadn’t locked it, hadn’t remembered he _could_ lock it, that locking was good practice. Ahsoka stands in the frame, silhouetted in the unfeeling light of a high class starship so her body casts a cat’s shadow across the cabin’s grated floor, her face bloodless. Beside her is R2, who chirps indignantly about being kept away. 

“It’s just us,” she says quietly. “I brought food,” she adds, and holds up the tray in her hands to prove it. “We’re coming in, Skyguy.” 

According to the chrono, it’s six minutes past the sixth standard hour. Even if he didn’t sleep the entire time, he’s been in bed for half a day. “Okay,” he says, and fixes the blankets. With the same caution she used yesterday, she enters, sets the tray on the tabletop at the end of the cot, and sits in the middle to give him room while R2 zips the cabin’s opposite end. “Mind if I have a few minutes, Snips?”

Eyes widening, she says, “No, of course not! Do you want me to leave?” 

He assures her it’s fine, which it maybe is and maybe isn’t, before he flits to the ’fresher with the towel and the uniform left untouched for weeks. This sonic is about as useful as his last one, but brushing his teeth helps a little. Though he’ll never be able to erase Tatooine, he can scourge himself of Zygerria. 

When he emerges, Ahsoka is where he left her, seated on his cot with her legs folded as she fiddles with the strap of her commlink. “Hey,” she says, and smiles, openly relieved. “I’m sorry about coming by so early, but you’ve got a meeting with the Council at seven. Master Obi-Wan wanted to do it, but I wanted to, so. Hi.”

“Hi,” he says, and returns her smile with the best he can manage as he sits between her and the protruding tabletop. She shoved aside the spare parts from the improved macrobinoculars he had started before he landed on Umbara so they crowd against the wall. As he moves the tray with the half-empty bowl of indiscernible broth and full glass of water to his lap, he says, “Why wasn’t there one earlier?” They don’t technically need him for a report yet, since he missed the majority of the fight on Kadavo and won’t, therefore, be able to comment on the immediate aftermath of the mission. What happened on Zygerria can wait for Coruscant.

“We dropped out of hyperscape like an hour ago to change lanes,” Ahsoka answers as he sips at the water. It’s still cool, and tastes of nothing, so he needs to restrain himself from drinking too quickly. “Master Plo boarded to do the meeting in person here. I guess so that the transmission would be weaker.” 

“Makes sense,” he says, though the last thing he wants is to interact with more people who know about what happened on Zygerria, but politely feign ignorance. “You coming?”

Shaking her head, she says, “Generals only. As usual.”

Abruptly, Anakin realises that also means Master _Krell_ will be there. Anakin hasn’t thought about the man since he woke, but the Kadavo backup came from Umbara, which means his replacement will be here, too. Fuck. At least Master Plo likes him. Master Krell’s never disguised that he shares the general opinion that Anakin is dangerous.

He pushes his hair from his forehead. It’s badly in need of trim. “Thanks for letting me know,” he says, as he registers that somewhere else on the ship, Master Obi-Wan’s rattled, “and for the food. How’ve you been doing? While we were—away.”

“Bored,” she says, and twists, her body partly turned towards him. “They wouldn’t let me go back to the front without you, so I had to go to _class._ But,” she adds, “I got to go to Illum with the younglings, which was cool. It went really well, so Master Yoda said I could do it again, but hopes it’s not because I pick up your habit of losing lightsabers.”

“It hasn’t been _that_ often,” he says, indignant with the spoon halfway to his mouth, and when she shoots back, “It’s been five whole times,” with R2 exclaiming that she’s _right_ , doesn’t he know, he almost feels normal.

The exchange ends in a lull. He swallows down his broth, tasting nothing as it settles wrongly, but he was raised knowing that he should never leave food uneaten. Waste wasn’t a luxury he could afford. 

Sometimes Padmé ends a meal with bites of it still on her plate. 

“How are you doing?” Ahsoka asks, her voice dropping again into that painful quiet. 

“I’m _fine_ ,” he says, but more harshly than intended, as his shoulders tense. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I didn’t mean—” She cuts herself off, sighs, and says, “Fine. So you’re _fine._ Master Obi-Wan’s not, which makes sense, and is okay. He was all messed up before Kix forced him to the bacta tank. And he’s been totally freaking out about you. We kind of all were. I got the Togruta out and came down to the surface and just found you passed out on the ground pretty much dead. Like, so close to dead that Master Plo’s medic had to inject you with adrenaline. That basically is dead. Not all of us can bring people back to life, you know.”

Guilt settles with the broth, prickling at his insides. Guilt over his inability to save Master Obi-Wan earlier, over worrying him and Ahsoka, over not fighting more. About forcing them to lie to the Council about why they went missing for three days. In the short time between returning to Coruscant after their excursion on the unnamed planet and the 501st’s deployment to Umbara with the Wolfpack, they hadn’t talked about the Dark Side or how Anakin killed her or that he brought her back to life without surrendering his own. He isn’t prepared to talk about it now, either.

When the Council sent the 501st to Umbara and the 212th to Patitite Pattuna on a rescue mission, it felt like some sort of punishment. They suspected the three of them were lying, but not about what, and were unable to prove it. Doubting Anakin was not new, but now their distrust in him seems to be infecting the others.

Then they sent them to Zygerria.

He sets the tray aside, the bowl and glass both empty. “I’m sorry,” he says, too exhausted to think of much else. “It was an accident.”

“I know,” she says, “but that doesn’t make it any better. I’ll take the stuff back. You should get going. And I’ll come by later.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

After she leaves him again, the silence of his cabin is more pronounced, but he breathes more easily. He stays there for as long as he can justify, enjoying a solitude that doesn’t come with any anticipation of interruption other than Ahsoka or Master Obi-Wan or, at most, Kix or Rex, who knock. This door has a lock, if he remembers to use it. 

He reaches the starboard bridge second to last, but before the call. When he arrives, Master Obi-Wan looks over at him from where supports himself against the pole of the holofield with fake nonchalance, while Master Plo fiddles with the transmission controls. Master Krell isn’t here, but Anakin loses his opportunity to ask when the transmission connects, revealing Master Yoda, Master Windu, and Master Mundi. Joy, Anakin thinks as the rest of them crowd into view. It’s _these_ three.

“ _Good it is to see you,_ ” Master Yoda says, his voice crackling through the unsteady connection, “ _Master Obi-Wan, Young Skywalker._ ” He leans heavily into his staff with both hands, and stares at each of them in turn. “ _Disturbing reports have we had from Umbara, Zygerria, and Kadavo. Shed light on them, we hope you can. What news have you from Umbara, Master Plo?_ ”

Anakin situates himself beside Master Obi-Wan, who stands halfway between upright and slouching with Master Plo on his left, listening but not fully absorbing the response. “The reports you’ve likely been hearing are true, Master Yoda,” Master Plo says, folding his arms. The melded bright white and staticked blue lights warp their shadows across the metallic grey floor plates, conjoining them. Until he says, “The surveil-cams had audio. They captured Master Pong Krell’s confession,” Anakin focuses more on the shape the shadows created than the explanation. His head snaps up, attuned now to the debriefing, as Master Plo goes on, “The Five o’ First and One Hundred and Fourth Battalions’ decision to imprison Master Pong Krell was their only option. He was intentionally attempting to sabotage the mission and reduce the Five o’ First’s numbers as a result of his deliberate turn to the Dark Side. His only trooper—the one they call Dogma—executed him in his cell.”

“ _This is worrying_ ,” Master Mundi says as Master Windu crosses his arms and Master Yoda taps his staff onto the unseen floor. Shocked, Anakin glances sideways to Master Obi-Wan, but he appears just as blindsided. This explains what Ahsoka meant, then, about complications on Umbara. “ _The presence of the Dark Side has been strengthening since the beginning of the Clone Wars, despite our vigilance._ ”

“ _There’s always a chance that he was not working alone_ ,” Master Windu adds. “ _Have you questioned the troopers involved? Was there any indication that this is a larger conspiracy?_ ” 

“There was no indication about further involvement in the Order,” Master Plo answers, as unaware as the rest about Anakin and Master Obi-Wan’s unspoken, wordless exchange of alarm, confusion, and apprehension. Knowing they were pulled from an active assault and a rescue mission were bad enough; to hear that _this_ is what occurred as a result is infinitely worse. “It seems that he believed that riding Umbara of Republic troops would convince Count Dooku to accept him as his new apprentice. Padawan Tano and I collected witness statements before we left for the Zygerrian system.”

This is worrying, they all agree. Very worrying indeed. It’s worrying that Count Dooku is actively working to turn Jedi, and it’s worrying that the kidnapping of individual dissentients of the Separatist cause has evolved into the capture and removal of entire neutral communities. “ _Certain are we_ ,” Master Yoda says, “ _that all have been freed?_ ”

“Yes,” Master Obi-Wan says, straightening his posture so his spine pops audibly. “The Republic agents sent on the ground in the Zygerrian capital were able to free those in the market following the Queen’s death. The processing centre on Kadavo is no longer operational.”

Kadavo will be discussed in detail during the mission summary on Coruscant, they say. Though Anakin expects that would be the end of it, Master Yoda turns to him, his holo eyes too large and glitching in their blinks, to ask, “ _True, is it, that visited Zygerria Count Dooku did?_ ”

“He did, Masters,” Anakin says, lowering his gaze to the floor as he tucks his hands in his pockets and out of sight. “He came to kill the Queen.” He came to kill the Queen, and Anakin stopped him.

Without looking, he can’t see the others’ facial expressions, but he imagines Master Windu’s furrowed brow and Master Mundi’s narrowing eyes. After a pause, Master Windu says, “ _Why would he assassinate his ally_?”

“He called her distracted, Master,” he says, “from the mission. Because of me. He said.”

“ _You would think a Sith lord would like having a couple of Jedi out of the way_ ,” Master Mundi says. “ _Are you aware of a visit to Kadavo, Master Obi-Wan?_ ”

“No,” Master Obi-Wan says, “and I do think I would know. Something must have delayed him from interfering during the attack on the processing centre. Anakin reached the site quickly, but Count Dooku could have appeared within minutes had he been truly invested in the enterprise. A Zygerrian revival may not have been his plan.”

“ _At work here other forces are_ ,” Master Yoda says. “ _Growing stronger the Dark Side is, its influence wide-reaching. Lower our guard against this influence we cannot._ ”

As Master Obi-Wan’s annoyance spikes, it draws Anakin’s attention again, so he raises his eyes, and discovers the three Council members staring pointedly at the two of them.

It’s the three missing days that did this. Before, he received this reaction routinely, but not his master—his _old_ master. This is his fault. How the Council feels about his old master and Ahsoka, well. They wouldn’t, if Anakin hadn’t killed his padawan and brought her back to life. 

“ _Was that Count Dooku’s only visit to Zygerria, Skywalker?_ ” Master Windu asks, adjusting his body to face Anakin entirely. “ _Did you see or hear about others?_ ”

Anakin curls his fingers in the fabric of his inner pockets, and shifts under the scrutiny. “Not that I know of,” he says. “My ma—” He catches himself, but too late, creating a silence that spreads, twisting through transmission to stretch taunt between them. Though he should continue, should pretend the slip never happened, whatever he meant to say sticks on his tongue.

Just as it reaches unbearable, Master Plo says, “I should return to my ship so we can enter hyperspace again. We’ll be in Coruscant by the end of the week.”

The conversation circles back to the incident on Umbara briefly before they adjourn the meeting, and Master Mundi ends the transmission. A good general and a good Jedi would stay, but by the time Master Plo turns, Anakin’s already gone.

For the first week in Zygerria, the Queen pretended to believe their lie. Master Obi-Wan sat at her table, ate her food, and flattered her with his usual brand of flirting, but never enough that she took him to bed. During that first week, she didn’t take Anakin to bed, either. Instead, she ran him around doing nothing in particular as her “bodyguard,” until finally, she slapped Master Obi-Wan with Force-suppression stuncuffs and stuck Anakin with an injection that achieved more or less the same result. Even if she wasn’t expecting Jedi on that particular month, she was well prepared.

There are blocks of time he doesn’t remember clearly, because external Force-suppression never treats him kindly, so the hours following the injections are patchy. The same was true for the hours following the _other_ injections. He never told her anything, he knows, but that was never what she wanted. She probably never thought to ask about Republic plans or Jedi affairs. Instead, her last question to Master Obi-Wan, as her guards took him away, was, “Tell me, are Jedi forbidden sex as well as love? Should I expect a virgin?”

After, at the start of the second week, she had Anakin follow her out in the early dusk to her room’s balcony, which overlooked the colourless palace gardens. It had no flowers, but curated paths of dark green plants and water features. “Those are called slave shade,” she says, reclining on her pillowed lounging sofa with a glass of what might have been Naboo’s blossom wine. She gestured with the glass to the space’s centre, where loft ornamental ferns with glossy leaves formed a hexagon around three sandstone benches and a mosaic of the city. “They serve no purpose in a garden other than as decoration.” Then she grinned, knife-edged and slick to reveal her fangs, and removed his detonator from her dress. “If I toss this down there, you’ll still follow my orders,” she said. “Move against me, Anakin, and I’ll see to it that you’re there to see my guards kill your _Master_ Kenobi.”

The detonator was useless, but the threat did its trick. That’s what mattered in the end.

Eight weeks later, the Queen of Zygerria is dead and so is her empire. Anakin locks his door for the first time since he stepped onto her planet, and swims in and out of sleep. In the morning, R2’s greeting beeps tug him from the cot, so he abandons his cabin before Ahsoka or Master Obi-Wan can find him and searches out Rex instead. 

When Anakin finds the captain, it’s just outside the hanger, and the relief that blooms across Rex’s face is so naked that he’d be insulted if only he weren’t so tired. They relocate to a semi-private alcove behind the starfighters, boxed in up to Anakin’s waist with crates of spare parts. “I heard about Krell and Umbara,” he says once they’re situated. “That never should have happened. Is there a list of casualties?”

“There is, General,” Rex says, mouth forming the suggestion of a frown before evening again into a line. “I’ll send it to you. I couldn’t earlier. There wasn’t any word about communication reopening with you and General Kenobi.” There’s a beat before he adds, “We lost Hardcase, General.”

Fucking Krell, Anakin thinks. Fucking Council and the fucking Senate. There were other ways to solve what happened in Zygerria. They _didn’t_ need him. He should have been with his men, back on Umbara, even if he does hate it when he’s on a planet where he can’t feel the sun. Umbara was a nightmare, he thought when he received the deployment. Now he just wishes he never left. 

But he can’t say this to Rex. “I’m sorry,” Anakin says, because that’s easy, and because he can think of nothing better. 

“General,” his captain says with the same cautious tone everyone’s been using since he woke in the medbay, “we know you and the Commander didn’t want to leave. Was it—was it worth it, sir? Did you free everyone?”

What began as a secret is common knowledge now, at least on the _Resolute_. It has to be, since the 501st was integral to the events on Kadavo. Rex means was the incident on Umbara worth it, or so Anakin assumes. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “General Plo Koon would be the one with the numbers.”

“Right, sir,” Rex says. “Sir, are—” There’s more he wants to say, all his unspoken words dropping out onto the floor between their feet, but in the end, he settles with “We’re glad to have you back, General.”

Long after they separate, his question echoes through Anakin’s head: _was it worth it?_ He doesn’t know if he can say the 501st deserved unnecessary losses for the sake of another mission, but the question could have other connotations. _Was_ it worth it? It must be. Even if not everyone survived, they ended the Zygerrian revival before it could take hold and freed all the slaves in the centre and in the city. They should have been able to do it without being caught, or, at least, without Master Obi-Wan being caught. Still, now these freed slaves have the opportunity to make new lives for themselves. It’s more than Anakin’s managed for the slaves on Tatooine. That means something, even if he had to feel the Queen of Zygerria bleed to death from a gut wound in his arms. She touched his face before she died, her hand sticky with her own blood. 

In bed, she liked to touch his neck right over the spot where his chip is embedded. 

Padmé kissed the spot once, early in their marriage. Walked up behind him with a plate of fruit slices balanced on one palm and caught him off guard when she pressed her lips against the gap in his vertebrae. He startled so badly he knocked the plate from her hand with his shoulder. She’s never done it again. 

Back in his cabin, he scratches at the spot, thinking while trying to think about the Queen digging her nails so deeply into his skin there that he bled, but also about Padmé and the kiss and _was it worth it?_ R2 chirps at him in reproach, as if knows where Anakin’s mind has wandered. 

At some point, he must drift to sleep again, because he wakes to a knock on his door, softer than Ahsoka’s, that drags him gradually out from his dream of the Chancellor’s office. “Anakin?” comes Obi-Wan’s voice through the door. “May I come in?” 

The chrono claims that it’s half past the twentieth hour. “Yeah,” Anakin answers, and slides from bed to cross the two steps it takes to switch _unlock._ “Hey,” he says, squinting into the blinding corridor light as he moves aside, allowing the other man to enter. “What’s up?”

Master Obi-Wan looks less unwell than he did during the mission report, with his beard and hair trimmed and posture close to normal, but the exhaustion pressed around his eyes is still too prominent and his body worn thin. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he says, and glances Anakin over, “and you look terrible. Perhaps you need to return to the medbay for further tests.” 

“Okay,” he says, though really, he would rather not. 

“Okay?” Master Obi-Wan repeats, and runs his hand through his hair. “May I sit?”

“I—yeah?”

They assume the position Anakin and Ahsoka shared yesterday morning, their knees a hair’s width apart, before Master Obi-Wan says, “I cannot delete that document twice. Is there another way to put your mind at ease?”

“I’m fine,” Anakin says, again, with a note of desperation too obvious to ignore. “Seriously, I’m—”

“You’re not,” Master Obi-Wan says. “I admit that I’m still rather unsure how to do this, but I have been doing some reading since the discussion we had regarding the Chancellor. But, I will say that I’m not ‘fine,’ though I have been trying to release my...unease into the Force. Though I can’t equate a few weeks to nine years, I think I understand a little now, at least, why it was—is—difficult for you to move on.”

In their first ten years together, he and Anakin rarely ever discussed Tatooine, and though that had changed since the night at Jabba’s, the brief conversations were few and far between. They were never like this. If he had a choice, it would have stayed that way. Hearing Master Obi-Wan claim he understands, at least a little, and knowing that he means it, just draws back Rex’s question: _was it worth it?_ Anakin should have tried harder to avoid him being caught.

Facing flushing, he says, “I’m sorry, Ma—” and stops as abruptly as he had in the Council meeting.

“It’s done, Ani,” says Obi-Wan, who’s made it clear since Anakin was knighted that he shouldn’t use the title _master_ again outside formal settings. “We’re out of Zygerria. You’ve been out of Tatooine for years.”

“I know that,” he says. “I’m fine, Ma—Obi-Wan. I am. It’s not important. What happened to the men on Umbara with Krell, though. It was almost half the Five o’ First and I had to find out about it in the Council meeting. That’s more important.”

“That is important, but it’s also separate.”

“No, it’s not.”

There’s a logic in that, but Obi-Wan still shakes his head. “Krell did not engineer the Zygerrian revival,” he says. “His actions were that of an opportunist. It’s simply a trick of misfortunate that your troops had to suffer for it. It would have been another unit, I suspect, had the Council thought of an alternative solution. They should have.”

Again, Anakin snaps, “I’m fine,” and scowls, turning his gaze to the ’fresher door to avoid looking at the man beside him. He isn’t lying; he _is_ fine. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be sleeping. That’s proof enough that he walked away from Zygerria with his inner wiring a little tangled, but not so badly that they’re unfixable. “The original plan was worse,” he says before Obi-Wan can respond. “Bet the result would’ve been the same. Ahsoka wasn’t what the Queen was looking for.”

Obi-Wan’s silence is an admission of agreement, but he doesn’t voice the thought. Still, Anakin feels an ill-suppressed, simmering anger he doesn’t expect quivering along their bond. Ever since the incident with Jabba, Obi-Wan’s reactions towards the Council’s decisions have grown worse. His insistence that they never learn about the existence of the unnamed planet showed the severity not two months ago. Now there’s this. 

On Zygerria, he never should have been caught. That was Anakin’s fault. The Queen turned away from Obi-Wan during dinner to look at him, her mouth split into her knife-edged grin with her fangs on display, and said, “You _are_ Jedi, though, aren’t you?” She said it, and Anakin hesitated. His brain short-circuited, stuck in that void between General Skywalker, Jedi, and Anakin from Tatooine, property, so he had a hair-trigger response to simultaneously protect the mission at all costs, and to follow orders. 

So he hesitated, and Ma—Obi-Wan’s cover lost its credibility.

“I was there when Kix drew blood for the panel,” Obi-Wan says, changing the subject rather than acknowledging that their mission went wrong from the start, because the Queen recognised Anakin when they first arrived. “Will you need treatment when we reach Coruscant?” 

His fingers twist in the blankets and his shoulders round. “No,” he says. “But I’ll have to go to a med centre. For more tests.” If he had to guess, the Halls of Healing could conduct a full one, but he can’t ask Master Che. 

“Would you like me to come with you?” Obi-Wan asks, thankfully not raising the issue of the Jedi healers’ known medical superiority. 

Though Anakin means to say no, he says, “Yeah, if you want,” instead, because for as humiliating as asking Master Che would be, the thought of going to a medical centre alone turns his blood to ice. 

“The Council will want the report when we arrive,” Obi-Wan says, and adds, “which we’ll give together,” as though Anakin doesn’t know this already. “We’ll visit the medical centre after we’ve finished.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Is that all right?”

When Anakin finally looks Obi-Wan’s way, the other man meets his eye directly, intensely. He’s still too washed out under the ceiling glowpanel’s severe glow. Too skeletal. Too exhausted. The mark on his neck from the shock collar is pale, as though he’s had it for years rather than days or weeks, and if he had any others when the rescue team pulled him from the processing centre, there’s no sign of them now. 

Bacta is a miracle. Anakin knows what it’s like to live without it.

“Yeah,” he repeats. “I just said that.”

The ghost of a sigh floats out on Obi-Wan’s next exhale. “I know,” he says, and doesn’t offer an explanation for the follow-up question. Later, when he finally moves to leave, he tells Anakin, “I will be with you when we report to the Council, and after.”

When Obi-Wan leaves, Anakin sleeps, and in his sleep, he dreams about the medjector’s needle sinking into his elbow’s crook. 

On Kadavo, he had the drug in his veins and the lingering traces of the Force-suppressant, but Obi-Wan and the Togruta needed the fleet and the fleet couldn’t land, so Anakin reacted. He reacted the way he reacted to the sight of Ahsoka’s corpse on that day in the other volcano’s caldera. For the canons in the four towers and the doors, he fried the circuitry, but he doesn’t remember what he did to the droids. It was something. He knows that much.

The Jedi Council have never hidden how they feel about what he can manage with the Force. Between Dooku’s actions and Krell’s failed defection, Anakin isn’t surprised that they’re acting wary, but the the way Master Yoda looked at him when said, “ _Lower our guard against this influence we cannot,_ ” knots together with the Queen’s whisper of “I think I’ll keep you” in his ear, in the dark, and his mother-in-law asking, “Has the Chancellor ever—touched you?” What would Padmé’s mother say to this? Nothing, preferably, but it’s Padmé’s choice to tell her. After this, Anakin doesn’t deserve much of a say in how his wife treats the information. If she’ll still be his wife. He might not know much about marriage, but last he checked, having sex with someone other than his wife is, by definition, cheating. The Queen wouldn’t have wanted to keep him if he hadn’t been responsive. 

He doesn’t tell any of this to Obi-Wan, and certainly never to Ahsoka or the men. When he talks to Padmé after receiving the med centre’s test results, he’ll tell her the truth, but skirt the details. There’s no need to hurt her any more than necessary.

It’s a standard week until they reach Coruscant, and for most of it, he sleeps. More than once he’s sick, and he seeks food and water with less frequency than Kix ordered. When they emerge from hyperspace, he’s on the starboard bridge with Obi-Wan on his left and Ahsoka on his right, and despite all that sleep, he’s so tired that the planet slides out of focus. The Council is down there, and the others in the Order, and Padmé. Down in Coruscant, Padmé waits for him, because the Chancellor always knows when he’s returning, and somehow or another, that means it always makes it back to her. He’s not the person she thought she married, but the Queen of Zygerria taught Anakin that he was right, those first few months following the wedding, when he assumed the whole relationship was a lie, because he’s exactly what he thought he was for nineteen years—just a bomb inside a body that’s never been his own. 


End file.
